Ahh, thank goodness for warm weather and daylight savings. My after
work trail riding has started.
The person I ride with, forever to be nameless, was quite entertaining
on our first after work ride.
Her horse got a big branch caught in his tail. When that happened last
year, he panicked. I was riding clean up tonight and spotted the instant
he got the branch in his tail. She slid off and removed the
offending thing. Getting back on for us without a mounting block is
quite a chore.
Luckily, we were in a place that had numerous downed trees. We
spotted a perfect tree mounting block, but the smaller end of the tree
wasn’t supported by anything. She got on it and it didn’t move much.
Our horses are trained to come over and stand beside the thing. So he
did, but she had to move further down the teeter totter log. At last
everything was perfect and she gave a tremendous heavy. The tree stayed
mostly steady. Her shoulder and chest were in the saddle and then it
was like slow motion ooze.
She oozed over the saddle and crashed below her horse…beside the
churned up dirt of the tree. Her horse never moved. She landed in the only dry spot within miles.
Usually, I’m not fortunate enough to see the whole episode. Usually my
back is turned and I just catch stuff like this out of the corner of my
eye. But tonight, Nova and were standing quite close and got to see the entire slow motion oozy dismount.
I’ll never forget.
I was kind enough not to laugh out loud, even when she laughed.
Her legs had turned to sticks of rubber, but she was able to get back on
the teeter totter tree and mount. I was proud of her.
Her index finger got hurt.